Going public (or not)
Last week, four detector groups at Brookhaven National Lab announced that they've created a state of matter that was last present during the earliest moments of the universe. Peter Steinberg, a member of one of the groups, discusses how the new matter differs from the quark-gluon plasma that many theorists had predicted. "All of this is very exciting, since it's finally presenting some of the emerging conceptual issues (e.g. the string theory connection) to both the public, and our colleagues from other fields of physics," he writes.

Tommaso Dorigo helped prevent the "blessing" of some new results in his collaboration, meaning that they won't be released to the public. Although he felt bad about "killing" someone's results, "I expressed my concerns with going public like this with a result that people will only take as our sign of defeat in this particular physics quest," he writes.

Sandra Leone hopes to submit results to her collaboration for blessing soon. In preparation, she describes her data analysis of W boson decay.

Almost famous
Frank Linde is this week's Most Famous Quantum Diarist. He appeared in a promotional film featuring innovative projects in and around Amsterdam, including the NIKHEF laboratory. Even if you don't speak Dutch, you'll enjoy seeing the inside of the lab.

Marcello Pavan was close to greatness this week, as he prepped "the last remaining Canadian to have known and touched Einstein" for a series of media appearances.

Gordon Watts discovered that he's famous among some of his former students. He got several votes for Most Popular Professor among graduating seniors. He's wary about reading too much into the honor, but we aren't. Congratulations, Gordon!